An icon which represents a user in a virtual reality/Internet setting, currently attempted with varying success. The term is adopted from Neal Stephenson; another word used for the same concept is Rudy Rucker's term "tuxedo."

First used from an Internet perspective in 1992 in SNOW CRASH, by Neal Stephenson, in one of those self-fulfilling SF prophecies. Stephenson got the name from the Hindu concept of avatars, which are the personification of various deities or entities.

A 2009 movie by James Cameron that is basically Pocahontas dipped in blue paint and exposed to enough radiation to make them grow 10 feet tall and ride dragon-birds, space llamas, and listen to the "flying jellyfish".

"Hey have you ever seen Pocahontas?"

"oh you mean Avatar, the movie with that giant blue girl who falls in love with a human and worships trees?"

It's James (Titanic) Cameron's Iliad, a fully rendered CGI world with Star Trek geek-level attention to detail (i.e. language) and robustness layered on a halfway decent story of love and existential morality.